Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Senate Republicans will now view the blue slip "as simply notification of how you're going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball" a judicial nominee. (Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans will scrap the chamber's "blue slip" tradition, eliminating a tool of the minority to block the executive's judicial nominees.

The Senate's blue slip procedure provides that a state's senators are consulted by the White House before a president nominates a judge from that state, regardless of party affiliation, according to a Congressional Research Service report detailing the blue slip policy.

The home-state senators have then historically had the opportunity to block a nominee from getting a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and vote. McConnell told TheWeekly Standard's Fred Barnes in an article published Wednesday that such opportunities will no longer exist.

McConnell said Senate Republicans will now view the blue slip "as simply notification of how you're going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball" a nominee.

McConnell's decision comes in the aftermath of Minnesota Sen. Al Franken's decision to use the blue slip process as part of his effort to block David Stras' nomination to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals last month.